OREANDA-NEWS. September 15, 2014. The Extraordinary General Meeting of Grupa LOTOS S.A. has approved increasing the Company's share capital by issuing new shares.

The proceeds will be used to finance the Company’s strategy, which envisages further investments to increase the Gdansk refinery's complexity and step up hydrocarbon production.

New shares will be offered to the Company’s existing shareholders. LOTOS expects to raise approximately PLN 1bn through the issue.

How much money is obtained from the issue will depend on the macroeconomic climate, capital market conditions, demand for the shares, and final terms and conditions of the offering.

As part of the approved share capital increase, Grupa LOTOS will offer PLN 55m new ordinary shares to its existing shareholders, who will hold pre-emptive rights to acquire the shares. The record date for the pre-emptive rights is November 18th 2014.

The shareholders holding Company shares as at the end of the record date (i.e. November 18th 2014) will have pre-emptive rights to acquire the new shares. Each share held as at the end of the record date will confer one pre-emptive right.

The number of new shares which may be subscribed for in exercise of one pre-emptive right will be calculated and announced by the Company's Management Board prior to opening of the subscription. The pre-emptive rights exercise period will be specified in the prospectus for the new shares, which will be prepared and, following its approval by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, published in connection with the public offering of the new shares.

LOTOS is a vertically-integrated oil company whose business is material to Poland’s energy security. LOTOS operates in exploration, production and crude oil processing, as well as in sale and distribution of a wide range of petroleum products. The Group is successful on wholesale and retail markets. The company has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2005.

Through its subsidiaries (LOTOS Petrobaltic S.A., LOTOS Exploration and Production Norge AS, and AB LOTOS Geonafta), it also operates in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea, as well as in Lithuania, where it is involved in exploration for and production of natural gas and crude oil from onshore and offshore fields. LOTOS is the second largest producer of hydrocarbons in Poland, and the only Polish operator extracting crude oil and natural gas from offshore deposits in the Baltic Sea. It is also the largest crude oil producer in Lithuania. In line with its strategy until 2015, LOTOS intends to increase its production to 1.2 million tonnes of crude oil per annum.